Creating a Leading Up Culture

Management Special Topics Courses
  • Course:Creating a Leading Up Culture
  • Course ID:LEADUP Duration:1-2 days Where: Your Office (7+ Persons)
  • Available as a private, customized course for your group at your offices or ours and in some cases as a WebLive(TM) class.

  • Download Course Description (PDF)

Course Outline

  • Openers
    • Discussion: What is upward leadership?  How do our direct reports exercise voice in this organization?
  • Creating a Leading Up  Culture
    • Discussion:  Organizational culture and our own influence over our work group’s culture
    • Activity:  Learning to listen
    • Exercise:  Determine our work group’s culture and create a plan for ensuring our direct reports are comfortable sharing privately held information
  • Leading meetings
    • Activity:  Anchors and prevailing winds
    • Exercise:  Action plan to lead meetings where privately held information is shared
  • Climbing Mount Everest (1.5-2 day program)
    • Guided simulation:  Harvard Business School Publishing: Mount Everest
    • Discussion and short lecture:  What is psychological safety on teams and how do leaders influence it?
  • Close Out
    • Wrap-up and Q & A

 

Course Overview

Course in a Nutshell

Organizations today are highly decentralized and face rapid change, both of which result in great dependency on those below us to provide salient information and think strategically. How can we communicate with those who report to us so that they provide useful input?  As we rise up the organizational hierarchy, we become less and less likely to hear the “ugly truths” that would prevent major mishaps.  How can we create a culture and work environment that ensures we are not being told “yes” by people who mean “no”?  In this one-day interactive course, you will learn how to create what Michael Useem calls a Leading Up culture, one where your direct reports know how, and are willing, to share critical ideas with you.

 

Customize It!

Customize this course at little-to-no additional expense to your specific needs.  One and a half-day program includes Mount Everest simulation (per person fee applies).

 

Learn How To

  • Define upward leadership and voice
  • Encourage those who report to you to speak up
  • Apply coaching skills to enable productive change
  • Lead meetings where privately held information is surfaced

 

Audience / Prerequisites

Aimed At

Managers and leaders who wish to create a guidance system that encourages those who report to them to put the organization’s mission ahead of personal concerns.

 

Prerequisites

None